


Duty is Heavier than a Hammer

by SMJB



Series: Forewarned Canon [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SMJB/pseuds/SMJB
Summary: Seven years after the events ofForewarned, it is time for June Egbert to face Lord English. Another Egbert had done it before in another reality with far less foresight, of course--but that Egbert hadn't known they were dragging seven kids to their death. Can she do it...and can she live with herself if she does?
Series: Forewarned Canon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1529768
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will make a lot more sense if you read[Forewarned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21215771/chapters/50508752) first.

Terezi awoke without June in her arms. She took a deep whiff and smelled her sitting on the edge of the bed. She already knew what was on her mind. “Today is the day.” 

“Yes, it is,” June said. “Do we really have to do this? Nothing else has gone the way they’ve gone in the epilogues.” 

“We’ve been over this,” Terezi said. “This is how fate and free will manage to coexist in the same reality; how we get from point A to point B is up to us, but the points themselves, the stations of the canon, still have to happen. The paths that allow reality to perpetuate itself get reinforced while those that do not get pruned.” 

“Yeah, but….” 

“You’ve done it before and you did a very good job in the Epilogues, up until the part where you let Lord English chomp on you. Just avoid that and you’ll be set.” 

“I know I survive, dummy! Obviously I have to if I was able to bring Vriska and the others to Earth C when I did. The problem is that that dope from the Epilogues didn’t know he was leading seven teens to their death!” 

“I know, June.” Terezi sat up and began massaging June’s shoulders. “Rose would say that essential and good are not the same thing, and we’ve got to worry about what’s essential. Hogwash, I say. There is definite, black and white, objective, mathematically derivable good and evil in the universe...but also greater and lesser goods and evils. And allowing causality itself to unspool is definitely a greater evil. I’d remind you that they’re all already doomed, belonging to a universe made irrelevant by our own actions, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Not to the emotional weight of it. 

“All I can tell you is that war is hell. You have to do things, make decisions, that cut you to your soul. Yes, those kids are going to die, but they were already going to die, and if the universe gets unspooled, then what did they die _for?_ ” 

“I know; I know.” 

Terezi pushed June away from her. “Well, get dressed. We got a hang in the park to get to.” 

~ ~ ~ 

They had a picnic in Volunteer Park. It was a very big picnic; between everyone who was here from the Alpha timeline and those of their native counterparts/relations who could make it/were invited, the number of guests was in the mid thirties. It was kept as casual as could be--there was no party games, no one used the “b” word, and there was certainly no cake (indeed, (June) had brought a vegetable casserole that made for a filling breakfast), but similar sorts of gatherings had happened every April 13th for the past seven years. A chill time was had by all. 

“Hey, June,” said the Rose. 

“Yes?” both Junes responded. 

“The younger June,” Rose clarified. 

“I still can’t believe you’re one of the only ones of us who had the opportunity to not be nominally confused with your doppelganger and you chose not to take it,” Dave said. 

June shrugged. “The name just feels right, you know?” 

“Quite. Anyway, if you could fly with me?” Rose lifted up into the sky, and June followed. Up, up, up they went until they could see all of Seattle spread out below them. “Do you see that?” 

“Yeah.” 

“This little pocket dimension has had a far more charmed history than it has any right to, and we’re responsible for that. We orchestrated the assassination of the local Doc Scratch, the removal of Gl’bgolyb in a way that didn’t result in the Vast Glub, the removal of all of Lord English’s footholds here, and rigging the troll war to fall in the humans’ favor. This Earth and this Alternia only exist in the way they do because of us, and this pocket dimension doesn’t have enough substance to rewrite its timeline should we disappear from reality. It’s quite possible that if you fail a June or a John from some other timeline will step in and that will become the new alpha timeline, but if that happens it’s not just us who will cease to exist.” She gestured around. “It’s not just that Earth C, a place we spent a few months one time, will be different. All of these billions of people are counting on you, June. If you fail, they will not exist, and will never have existed.” 

“...” 

“And even were that not the case, even though they’ve got the smartest people in the worlds working at the Hawking Initiative, it might not be enough to solve their little existence problem, in which case we’re going to have to evacuate them to Earth C, and we can’t do that if we don’t exist.” 

“I get it!” June said finally. “I know what I have to do, Rose. I just hate it.” 

“I know, June,” Rose said. 

They landed, and June couldn’t hide the fact that she’d been crying. “It’s approaching time I left,” she announced. 

“Hey, um, maybe you don’t have to do this?” (June) suggested. “I mean, wasn’t it already done?” 

“That was another reality, if the Epilogues were a reality at all. We’ve still got to do this. _I’ve_ still got to do this,” June said. 

“How do you know, though?” 

“Because I’ve been dreaming of Act Seven.” 

“You have?” Terezi asked. “How come I didn’t notice?” 

“Because, amazingly for someone who grew up in Alternia’s brutal lawless social darwinian dystopia, you sleep like a log,” June explained. 

She went into the bathroom and emerged transformed. She was dressed in her godtier outfit, her makeup gone, with her hair tied in a low ponytail. “I think it’d be best if I were as recognizable as possible,” she explained. “Like, you guys are all great and understanding and all, but...I just don’t want to be explaining my life story to a bunch of teens. 

“Shit; I should have bought a binder.” 

“You can use mine,” Roxy said, and they went into the bathroom together. “Man, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the women’s restroom,” he joked. 

“Thank you for this,” June said. 

“Hey, no prob, what’s a boob holster between friends? But, ah...you don’t have to do this.” 

“It’s just better this way.” June couldn’t explain why she felt this way. 

But I can. It’s actually not that complicated--she didn’t want to care about these kids. To get attached to them. There would be no opening up to them, sharings of secrets, or heart-to-hearts, and since they knew she “had been” a boy and she could hardly pretend to be a stranger with all of John’s knowledge and powers, well, that really only left one option if she wanted to preserve her emotional distance. 

She’s going to fail miserably, of course. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, that time I said I had no intention of showing you what happened in the battle with Lord English in [the notes to Chapter Four of _Forewarned_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21215771/chapters/50756392#workskin)? That was a lie. I was already writing this when I wrote that.
> 
> It wasn't a lie when I said large parts of this were part of the first draft of _Forewarned_ , however--which is something I wrote before June Egbert was a thing. So yeah; I've proofread this three times, and I keep finding more he/hims hiding in the cracks like cockroaches. Like I think I got them all, but if you see one I missed...for the love of God, please tell me.


	2. Chapter 2

They awkwardly sat back to back as each got half undressed. Roxy passed June his binder over one shoulder, and in a scene that would be comic if this were that kind of story, that’s when Vriska walked in.

“Hey--woah!” She held up her hand in front of her face and closed her eyes.

“Vriska! We’re--”

“Yeah, no, I heard that you were going to do this in drab,” Vriska said. “We’ve got more important things to talk about.”

“One second,” June said.

“Yeah, let’s not do this with our tits out,” Roxy added.

When everyone was fully dressed, Vriska continued. “Alright, so Rose took you up in the sky and talked about how literally none of this was going to be here if you don’t do this, right?”

“Yeah,” June said.

“Figures. You’d think someone studying psychology would have a better idea of how people work,” Vriska said. “Look, those numbers mean nothing to you. They _should_ , and they _would_ if humans were put together by a competent creator, but unfortunately what you got was us fuckups, and so the numbers just slide right off of your think sponge. So don’t think about that. Don’t think about the billions who will cease to exist, or about what’d happen to them if by some miracle they did persist. I want you to think about one thing and one thing only.”

“What’s that?” June asked.

“Terezi,” Vriska said. “She was never happy before, and would never have been happy in the world of the epilogues. But she’s happy here, with us, with you and with me. Do it for her. Do it to preserve the existence of a timeline in which she can be well.”

June looked Vriska dead in the eye and felt her resolve harded. She nodded. “Thank you, Vriska. And...take care of her, if I don’t make it.”

“We already know you do, dummy. But yeah, of course. And remember: you’ve already got a roadmap to victory--just avoid the part where Lord English bites you.”

And with nothing more to say, June zapped out of there.

“Do we, though?” Roxy asked.

“Do we what?” Vriska asked.

“Know that she’s going to make it.”

“Um, yeah? We do return to Earth C in _Forewarned_ ; kind of hard to do that without her.”

“Yeah but in spite of the conversation Rose had with...the narrator? It isn’t quite clear...where they explained _Homestuck_ ’s inaccuracies were because of being copied and pasted from another reality, _Forewarned_ still got stuff wrong. And as far as I’m aware, this is the last station of the canon we have to achieve. So who’s to say we don’t spend the rest of our lives here?”

~ ~ ~

Let’s press fast forward, shall we? After all, if you’ve read _The Homestuck Epilogues_ you already know basically what happens. There are some differences, of course. June, knowing the doom that awaits them, is more dour about the mission than John was. June collects the ring of life and then just sort of doesn’t make with the chitchat as she zaps the Game Over versions of her human friends to her childhood home like a blue phantom--in the same order, just in case that’d make a difference; it probably wouldn’t, but still.

It occurs to her just before she zaps herself there that these aren’t the alternate versions of her friends--these are the originals, the ones from her timeline. The people she actually grew up with were the ones she was planning to sacrifice--

She clamped down on that train of thought like a bear trap. Nothing good would come of it.

June zapped out of there, to her childhood home. It wasn’t quite the punch in the gut for June that it had been for John, for there was a version of this exact house in what they’d come to call the realm of two stars where a version of June’s dad still lived whom she had lived with between the ages of sixteen and eighteen.

(But this is the _original_ Dad, the _real_ \--)

Nope.

“So what’s the deal, guy who I can only assume is adult John?” [Dave] asked. “Nice hair, by the way; you in a rockband or something?”

John had had a whole speech here; not a good one, but one that had somehow worked nonetheless. June had memorized John’s speech, had been reciting it over and over again for the last couple days. She opened her mouth and nothing came out. “...We’ve got to fight Lord English,” she managed at last.

No one spoke, until [Dave] broke the silence. “A’ight. Cool So what’s gonna happen to everyone we left in the wrecked timeline?”

“Uh, well. I don’t know actually. I’ve been to that time line four times now and it always pretty much goes to shit.”

“Oh,” [Dave] said.

“This has been bothering me as well. Is Kanaya going to be ok?” [Rose] asked. “And by Kanaya, I guess I mean... everyone?”

“Yeah what about Karkat...and Terezi...and the _Mayor??_ ” [Dave’s] eyes went wider and wider with each name.

“Oh my god!!!!!” [Jade] realized.

“What?”

“Actually Dave, I hate to say it but...I think John might have actually saved the mayor by bringing us all here?”

“No I didn’t! They’re all dead,” June snapped. “Everyone’s dead, okay? They’re dead because you come from a doomed timeline and there’s nothing you can do about it but get revenge on the fucking son of a bitch who is responsible for literally all of the pain and suffering that’s ever happened in our universe, on Alternia, or in any connected realm insofar as I can tell.”

Everyone was staring at June.

“Hey, dude, you feeling alright? Your voice seems...off,” [Dave] commented.

Right, her voice; years of vocal training were a hard thing to just up and drop, apparently. “Look...never mind that. The fact of the matter is that everyone who has ever existed or will ever exist is counting on us. Full stop. I’m sorry to pull you out of your lives, doomed though they might be, and ask this of you, but there is no other way; it had to be you--these specific versions of you, I think.” June realized that she was giving a speech, after all, and added one final line: “So what say you we complete the stable time loop of Lord English’s life by killing him like the heroic badasses we are?”

“Damn,” [Roxy] said admiringly. “John, uh, I know we just met and all but...that was a fine ass speech and IDK if I speak for the rest of my peeps here but I’m fucking psyched--let’s do this shit!”

June couldn’t help but grin a bit at the fact that she said, word for word, the exact thing she said in the Epilogues; fortunately, the rest aren’t as uninspired as they were in that reality.

[Rose] cocked her head to the side. “You’ve changed.”

“I mean, I’d hope so; I’m twenty three.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yes.”

“Who came up with it?”

“You did, technically.”

[Rose], knowing full well what she was capable of, shivered. “Well, at least we know it’ll probably accomplish the goal. Let’s hear it...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roxy and Vriska's continued conversation after June left is brought to you by the realization that the logical thing to do would have been to read _The Adventures of Terezi Pyrope: A Scandal in Bohemia_ BEFORE entering the book and actively deciding not to change it (it changes nothing regarding their interactions with and realizations about that world and has better narrative pacing the way it's written--also, these kids can be dumbasses sometimes). It also makes for a fascinating bit of metanarrative if these fics can and do lie to you sometimes (you ever see something "based on a true story"? It's sort of like that).
> 
> Oh, and it also ups the stakes going forward, I guess.


	3. Chapter 3

There’s not a whole lot next except a bunch of action, and really, who has time for that? Screw fast forward, we’re hitting skip this time.

June, inside the juju, took off her glasses. _Yep, these are fucked,_ she thought calmly as she capchalogued them and put on a fresh pair. Not that there’s much to see here.

[Rose’s] small voice came through the wall. “John? Can you hear me, John?”

“I’m here,” June shouted back.

“Please tell me this was part of the real plan.”

“It was, actually.”

“Oh, good. What happens next?”

“We wait for an indeterminate amount of time, emerge, and kick Lord English’s ass.”

“And what about our dancestors?”

“I honestly don’t know what happens to them.”

“...I see.” [Rose] said. “...In the world you come from, how is Kanaya? How is Roxy?”

“Great. They’re great. You and Kanaya are married. There’s a you and a Kanaya from another universe--long story--and they are also married. I didn’t see that wedding because it happend years before we met, but the wedding of your alpha timeline selves was...it was amazing, Rose. You looked very beautiful in that suit, and Kanaya in her dress, and they’re all of them very, very happy.

“And Roxy’s great, too. He and Callie--”

“‘He’?” [Rose] asked.

“Yeah. Roxy’s trans, who knew?” June said. She paused. She sighed. “I’m trans, too.”

~ ~ ~

“--er the plan,” June was saying as they suddenly appeared on the battlefield. She had her good glasses on and full makeup, with her boobs free. Well, not _free_ \--she was wearing a sports bra--but you know what I mean.

And then there was time for nothing else, because they were in the shit. All around June was pandemonium, a multichromatic cyclone of shrieks and clashing colors, blah blah blah, etcetera. [We’ve been through this song and dance.](https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/meat/15)

[Jade] and [Rose] were bobbing and weaving, and [Rose] avoided the godzilla breath blast that was destined to kill her off. Well, _maybe_ destined; killing Jade and Rose off so John and Dave could have the glory of taking this douche out seemed like a very Caliborn move, and thus a very Ultimate Dirk move.

[Jade] was firing a million bullets into Lord English with her highly illegal bump stock modified rifle while [Rose] lashed at him with whips of pure light. Suddenly, a razor-sharp fragment of reality slammed into [Jade’s] back, skewering her right through to the center of the space symbol on her hoodie. She looked at June, confused, before she chokes and goes limp, encircled by a halo of her own blood. June read an accusation in that look ( _Why didn’t you warn me about this?_ ), but that was simply her guilty conscience.

It was time to get in there. June encased Lord English in his own personal typhoon of get rekt and used the moment to grab her dying teen sister and yeet her into the gaping maw of the black hole. June then summoned her hammers and entered the fray.

Again things go more or less the way it was foretold. Right down to her not letting go of the hammer--remembering just a second too late that she was specifically supposed to _not_ do this. For a moment she saw her death coming.

“June!” [Rose] shouted, knocking her out of the way and getting chomped on by Lord English for her trouble.

June aimed a ferocious blow directly at Lord English’s trachea, preventing him from trying to swallow her, but Rose had a couple of real bad holes in her now.

[Dave] stabbed him, getting vored for his trouble, and then Davepeta grabbed him and dragged him off into the black hole.

The battle was over. June and dying [Rose] stared at the accretion disk of universes as all of Paradox Space got sucked into this mess.

“Well, it seems there were some things you didn’t tell us about, June,” [Rose] said.

“Jade had to die there to facilitate certain events happening on the other side of the event horizon. And Dave would never have gotten close enough to stab him without dying,” June explained.

“And me?”

“I was being a dumbass. Sorry.”

“So it has nothing to do with the fact that I am now a superfluous Rose from a doomed timeline who has no place in your new universe?”

“Nah, we’ve already got three Roses running around. Another wouldn’t have been a big deal.”

[Rose] chuckled, darkly. “Too bad. I’d like to think I was dying for _some_ reason.”

“Maybe we can do something about that tooth, instead of leaving it in for, like, a week while it spews poison into you like a dumbass the way I did. Do you want me to take a look at your chest?”

“At least buy me dinner first,” [Rose] said dryly.

“Ha. Ha.”

“You mentioned poison. What does it do?”

“Well, according to our primary source, it’s going to kind of...sort of...erase you from reality? ‘Cherubs don’t fuck around’--that’s a direct quote.”

“Then we can’t fuck around, either. You’ve got to kill me.”

“What?” June demanded.

“It’s the only way for my ghost to survive, if what you’re saying is true.”

“Do you really want to survive in this?” June asked.

“Time and space are not absolutes out here. I can get to before...find my Kanaya...maybe even take part in one of the battles against Lord English, once the millennia get to be too much of a drag.”

“Yeah, but…”

“This is a Scratch-level event and requires a Scratch-level solution.”

June gripped her last remaining hammer and nodded gravely. “Any last words?”

“A couple. One, if you’re feeling guilty about any of this, don’t. It’s exactly what I would have done, after all.”

“I’ll...try. And what else?”

“...You don’t look half bad as a woman, June.”

And she brought the hammer down on [Rose’s] head.

This was absolutely going to give her nightmares, but she couldn’t cry yet. There were still so many things to do. She’d made a promise to Terezi, all those years ago. A million miles to go before the dawn.


	4. Chapter 4

June went in the direction Davepeta had come from and went back in time a few moments, grabbing them by the arm.

“Hey, man, I’ve got a job to do right meow,” they said.

“You mean grabbing Lord English and flying off into the the black hole? Hold that thought for a second.”

“I haven’t got long--”

June, having dragged them out of the path, went back again and they watched another Davepeta, unimpeded by June’s retcon shenanigans, do what they were destined to do.

“Or that works too, I guess. Thanks for saving my life.”

“To be fair, it’s not really clear whether or not you’d have survived that,” June said. “ You’re not mad about averting your destiny or whatever, are you?”

“Of course not. Dying for the cause fucking blows, June.”

“...How do you know my name?”

“C’mon, June; Ultimate Self here, remember? Now then, I assume you’re not just here for me?”

“Oh, right! We’ve got to find Sollux and Aradia!”

And so they did.

“Whose there?” Sollux demanded.

“It’s me, June.”

“Who the fuck is ‘June’?” Sollux asked.

“John but a girl,” Davepeta said. “I’m Davepeta, the sprite fusion of Dave and Nepeta.”

“Okay,” Sollux said.

“Just ‘okay’?” June asked.

“We’ve been hanging out in the Furthest Ring for three years; we’ve seen some shit,” Sollux said.

“Fair enough, but there is still one more person we need to collect, so everyone hold hands,” June said. They hopped backwards once again, and scoured the battlefeild.

Vriska wasn’t hard to spot, once she deployed the weapon. Things got messy, but June knew the lore and so knew generally where Vriska ought to be when she started falling towards the black hole. Indeed, there she was, and June flew in and grabbed her.

She wondered why she was unconscious. After all, she hadn’t been when this happened in the Epilogues, and events here seemed to be more or less faithful to them, except where June intervened.

Well, it was no matter. She returned to the group and they jumped to Earth C. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep this whole ‘June’ thing secret for now,” June said. “Causality, and all that.”

“For how long?” Aradia asked.

“Not long, only a few months. You’ll know when you can talk freely about it, don’t worry,” June said.

Aradia nodded.

June nodded back, and leaped back to the battlefield at the end of reality. One final task before she could go home. She searched the blank whiteness.

“Yo blue guy. Get the shell down here,” comes the voice.

June does so.

“Oh shit like have you been a woman this whole time and I just haven’t noticed or what?”

“...Yes.”

“K whatever. Waterboat Lord English?”

“Dead.

“Look, you’re supposed to steal this ring off of me, according to canonicity or whatever, and honestly I don’t have the mental energy to be dealing with this for much longer, so here, take it.”

“...Maybe I don’t want it if it’s going to be this easy.”

“God damn it, Meenah.” June flings the ring of life at her, which has a capchalog card tied to it with dental floss that she wasn't supposed to notice until she was on the other side of the black hole.

June didn’t stick around to see what she did with it, she just made one final leap back to two star!Earth and her not-a-birthday-party. There was a round of applause when she reappeared.

“You feeling alright, kid?” (Rose) asked.

“My therapist will be hearing about this one,” June said.

(Rose) nodded.

June went back into the bathroom to find Roxy still talking to Vriska.

“...And as far as I’m aware, this is the last station of the canon we have to achieve. So who’s to say we don’t spend the rest of our lives here?”

“A fair point,” admitted Vriska. “However, you’re forgetting something. She _also_ brought Sollux, Aradia, myself, and Davepeta to Earth C, remember? So unless the three of them have been hiding the fact that she was mortally injured while doing so--”

“Hi guys,” June said. She gave Roxy his binder back. “Thanks man.”

“No prob,” Roxy said. “Are you doing okay? You were asked to do a lot just now.”

“I’ll live.”

June got other such congratulations/condolences, and the party went on. Existence went on. This little pocket dimension would continue its relatively charmed though still fairly far far from utopian existence for decades or centuries or perhaps millenia, but long before the end they’d have returned to Earth C with the lessons they’ve learned to--hopefully--do a better job of it this time.

“Hey, what do you think happened to those versions of Roxy, Jake, Jane, and Dirk who I stranded on Caliborn’s planet?” June asked.

“Die, I guess,” Terezi said.

“Die? You really think so?”

“I mean, we all die eventually.” Terezi reconsidered. “Then again, they’re all god tier, and that’s technically a doomed timeline, so maybe they’ll just sort of cease to exist when it finally unspools.”

June pounded the table. “Fuck that noise!” she declared.

She concentrated on the moment, not knowing whether or not this action was even sanctioned by a narrative, knowing that she had lost the armor of inevitability, and not giving a damn. She knew she couldn’t save everyone, that Paradox Space itself would unravel if she tried, but damn it, she could save these four kids.

She hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out I cut off Roxy and Vriska's conversation in chapter 2 at the exact right moment to be maximally emotionally manipulative. To be fair, that's what you get for believing something you read in Homestuck.
> 
> Speaking of implications you shouldn't believe, what do you figure the odds are that it's still the Candy timeline on the other side of that event horizon?


	5. Chapter 5

[Jane] finished up healing [Dirk], the last of her friends.

[Dirk] sat up. “I’m alive,” he said.

“Do you think we did it?” [Jake] asked. “Killed Lord English?”

“I think we _created_ Lord English,” [Dirk] said.

“What?” asked [Jake].

“Dunno. It’s just a feeling I get.”

“But...why would John do that?” [Roxy] asked.

“Stable time loops, man. A lot of events in our own story are riding on his existence. Like, the dream bubbles only exist because the horrorterrors needed a distraction to stop him from killing them, and without them there’s no afterlife for us. That sort of thing.”

“Speaking of which...is he ever coming back for us? John, I mean,” [Jane] asked.

“Of course!” [Roxy] declared.

“Is he, though?” [Dirk] asked. “I get the impression they’re going to be in that juju for a long, long time. If they ever get out...will they even remember us? Or will their sole purpose be to end Lord English--I think I heard Caliborn say something along those lines when he...when he did the thing. Will they even be human, or will they be subsumed into the juju?”

“That is dark,” [Jane] said.

“Yeah,” [Dirk] said. He stared out over the Land of Colors and Mayhem. “So, did Caliborn ever get any grist, or are we going to have to find some farming implements?”

There was a sudden gust of air, and then a bright light and then--

“John!” [Roxy] declared. Then: “John?”

“Yeah, plot twist, I’ve secretly been a girl all along. I’ll explain later. And the name’s June, actually,” June said. “Now, then, let’s get out of here.” She held out her hands.

“Where are the others?” [Jane] asked.

“They...didn’t make it,” June said.

That brought the mood down.

“And is Lord English dead?” [Dirk] asked.

“Yes. There’s a not entirely accurate chronicle of the event you can read later if you like.”

“Did we help?” [Dirk] asked.

“You got us where we needed to be to kill him, how we needed to get there” June said. “Now, then, if you want to stand around and chat all day, there are better places in which to do it. Let’s go.”

And so they zapped out of there, and appeared, once again, at the not-party.

“Woah,” [Roxy] looked around at all the people, many of whom were familiar, but not all of them--they’d made friends during their time here, after all.

“Just what we needed--even more time-displaced versions of ourselves,” Dirk said. “The natives will never be rid of us.”

[Jane] had a realization. “Where will we stay?”

“Yes, let’s make arrangements,” said Jane.

It was quickly decided that [Jane] would have Jane’s old room at her dad’s house, [Dirk] would have Dirk’s old room at (Dave’s) house, [Jake] would have Jake’s old room ad (Jade’s) house, and [Roxy] would have Roxy’s old room at (Roxy’s) house. Of course, those rooms had since been repurposed, and so there had to be temporary arrangements made for the interim.

Meanwhile, June grabbed another peice of casserole; in this universe, it had only been fifteen minutes since she left the first time, but for June it had felt like breakfast was a million years ago. She watched from afar as they figured all this out.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you feeling alright, daughter?” (Dad) asked.

“Yeah,” June said.

“You did good,” he continued.

“Unless there was some important thing that they needed to do there yet that I screwed up, of course,” June said.

“You can’t beat yourself up about this sort of thing, especially not in this particular instance since there is zero evidence that is the case. And in any case, if you created a problem by saving these teens, you can always fix it later with your magical god powers.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Excuse me, is there any casserole left?” asked a new voice.

June turned. “Ms. Ocasio-Cortez!”

“Please; after everything we’ve been through together, you can call me Alexandria,” AOC said. The first Socialist president of the United States grabbed a plate.

“What are you doing here?” June asked.

“I knew today was going to be a hard day for you, and I wanted to be here to help you through it.”

“I’ve already done it,” June said.

AOC spied the younger versions of some of June’s friends. “I take it these are all that made it?”

“Yeah,” June said. “I just hope I didn’t screw up the alpha timeline by bringing them here.”

AOC nodded sympathetically. “It’s a hard thing, to care. Opening yourself up to other people’s pain means you’re going to get hurt. But the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to that pain is a trait you can’t afford to lose, I think, because once you stop caring about people you run the risk of forgetting what you’re fighting for. I’ve seen far too many people who became leftists because they couldn’t stomach the horrors of capitalism eventually turn around and become tankies, defending the actions of monsters like Stalin, Mao, Lenin, or even the Kims--because they forgot why they were Leftists in the first place. I make a point to remind myself every day that what I want, what I _really_ want are worlds in which no one goes hungry or dies of a preventable illness, no one lives in fear, and everyone is treated with the dignity that is their due as a sophont entity; everything else is just a means to an end.”

“I know, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. You’ve given this speech before.”

“My point is, look around you. Take a good hard look. Now tell me, truthfully and honestly from the bottom of your heart: did you do the right thing?” AOC commanded.

June did so. She saw the smiling, laughing people, the new arrivals still awkward, being made no less awkward by being the youngest ones at the party, but getting the hang of it. Beyond them birds were chirping, kids were flying kites, and it was, all in all, a beautiful day.

“I did,” she said eventually. Again, with greater confidence: “I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I said in the PGenPod discord that the main cast would meet AOC at some point this actually isn't what I was talking about. I originally had a different ending to this story, which was bad. I was going to have June get over her hatred of birthday parties, but then actually reading it over I was like "What? No. I haven't earned this. It's just so forced." Luckily I came up with this other idea that was good and smart instead of being bad and dumb.
> 
> Timeline of the TwoStar!American presidency:
> 
> Al Gore assumes the office in ~1997 when Bill Clinton gets assassinated by a Subjuggulator. After winning the war, he easily wins election and begins a rapid modernization program to ensure that the Earth won't get completely wiped out should there be another troll war when there are adult trolls who know proper tactics and stuff. IRL Obama probably wouldn't have been able to win the presidency after a Gore presidency but this is Homestuck!Obama and so he does, focusing his efforts on electoral reforms such as anti-gerrymandering measures which end up completely destroying the national viability of the Republican party. Because instant-runoff elections mean there could be no spoiler effect the Socialist party puts in a serious effort with their candidate Bernie Sanders, who does amazingly well--but Hillary Clinton still wins. Socialists do better in the next three elections (with a dip in 2020 because of Clinton's reelection) and finally win the presidency in 2024 with AOC (the first year she'd be legally allowed to run, BTW), who is reelected in 2028 because duh. The current date (13 April 2032) is in the final year of AOC's presidency.


End file.
